Sachs Press

Dear Great-Grandma,

In this letter I would like to tell you about some of the things I like to play with right now. My most favorite thing to do is to read books and listen to Mommy or Daddy (or anybody else) read to me. I am not sure if I would let them read to me all day, but maybe most of it.

My second most favorite thing is to listen to music. There are a couple of music tapes that I especially like but any music will do, especially if it is Mommy or Daddy singing to me. We almost always sing at mealtimes to thank God for our food (sometimes we just say a prayer instead, but I like the singing better) and if we forget I remind Mommy or Daddy that we need to pray, and I say “Amen” at the end.

There are some other toys I like to play with, too. I like puzzles. I am good at the kind of puzzle where each piece has its own place and they don’t get all muddled and mixed up in the middle. I like playing with magnets on the refrigerator. I also have a chalkboard downstairs that I can write on with chalk, but I don’t have any alphabet letters for it. Mommy says that would be fun. I can recognize the letter “B” sometimes, and I always know the letter “O” although sometimes I call it an oval.

I like to cuddle with my stuffed animals, especially Lamby, but also my big white dog and my hedgehog puppet and Mommy’s puppy from when she was little and Daddy’s bear from when he was little.

I like to play with Duplo blocks that fit together and make towers. I am pretty good at fitting them together although I still can’t make my towers go very high without some help.

I love to ride my cars. I have a car downstairs and a car outside. They both have horns that beep and steering wheels and the wheels go “round and round!” There is also a remote control car that Mommy and Daddy let me play with sometimes. I am not very good at making it go where I want it to go, but at least I press the buttons and have a good time.

I like to hammer on things, and I like to help Mommy and Daddy with what they are doing. For instance, sometimes I carry things for them, or pick things up and put them where they are supposed to go. Or if Mommy is vacuuming I love to try to vacuum too. Sometimes she even lets me use the real vacuum, with it on, but not very often. But it always makes me very happy when she does let me. More often she lets me sweep with a broom.

I also like to run around in circles. It is fun just to run and run sometimes. I really like it when we go to the playground and I can run around there, and swing, slide, and climb. I never want to leave the playground!

I know so many things now, Great-Grandma! I know lots and lots of animal sounds–sheep, cow, horse, pig, chicken, rooster, mouse, duck, elephant, lion, bear, goat, monkey, owl, and probably some more that I can’t think of just now. I can name some shapes, like star and circle and oval. I know a bunch of color names but I don’t usually get the colors right. I can name most of the things in my Big Book of Words. 

I can talk in sentences. If I drop my book on the floor, I say, “I dropped it, book!” I can tell Mommy when Daddy comes home: “Daddy home!” or when he goes to work: “Daddy work!” I can tell you where things are: “Pumpkin floor,” or “pumpkin table!” and I can also ask where they are: “Pumpkin, wheya you?” (Pumpkin, where are you?) Another think I can talk about is things that are off and on: “Light off, light on.” I know that stoves can be hot. “Hot stove! Dane-jous!” (dangerous). Another important thing I can do is ask for things. “Mommy read it, book!” A lot of times she says, “Say please,” so then I say, “Peese!” and she reads my book to me.  I also know my name. If you ask me what my name is, I can say, “Name Idaac.” So you see, Great-Grandma, that I am really learning to communicate. It is nice to be able to tell people what I am thinking, although sometimes when I get upset I forget about being able to talk and I just cry or whine. Then Mommy has to remind me to “use words” and most of the time I can stop crying and tell her what I’m upset about.

Well, Mommy says it is time for me to take a nap now. Sometimes I like naps and sometimes I don’t. Twice now I have skipped my nap. Mommy says she is not ready for me to give up naps yet so I guess I won’t, but they waste an awful lot of time, don’t you think? Do you take naps, Great-Grandma? What are they good for?

I will write to you again next week. I love you!

Love,

Isaac

Dear Great-Grandma,

I am playing with stickers right now. Oma gave them to me. I am sticking them all over my arm and my shirt and I figure I can dictate a letter to Mommy while I am busy with my stickers.

How are you doing? I am doing well. I have had a good week. I got to visit Oma and Opa for two days! Mommy and I went to their house on Monday and stayed till Tuesday and then we went home. We missed Daddy but we had a lot of fun.

We helped Oma outside in her garden. She had a lot of plants that needed to be trimmed or pulled out. She gave me a little wheelbarrow and I wheeled it around with plants inside. Mommy worked hard and I worked some, too. I liked visiting the doggies that live next door. One of them gave me a kiss on the nose!

Opa played with me a little bit, even though he was very busy. He sang songs to me and played ball with me, and we also played Where’s the Mouse? That’s a game where you have a little toy mouse and you hide it and then you have to find it. We made it up ourselves. Once we really lost the mouse and Mommy had to come find it for us. She is good at finding things.

Oma played with me a lot because she wasn’t as busy as Opa. She read books to me and we played with trains together. I am good at putting train track together. It is fun to make it connect and build long tracks. Someday when I am older I will learn more about making big train tracks but in the meantime I will practice putting them together.

Mommy made applesauce for Oma while we were there. Oma hurt her finger a little and that makes it hard for her to do some things, so Mommy did some of them for her. We ate some of the applesauce for lunch and it was YUMMY! I really like applesauce.

Oma gave some of the herbs in her garden to Mommy to take home, and Mommy made mint tea, and she also dried some thyme and some rosemary. They smelled very interesting!

Another very interesting thing that happened this week is that we got a new car. It is a car just for me. Mommy and Daddy don’t fit in it. We went to someone’s house with lots of things out in the yard and this was one of the things, so we got to take it home with us. I really, really like it! It doesn’t have a floor, so I sit on the seat and put my feet down through to the ground and make it go that way. It does have a steering wheel, and it also has a horn that squeaks and a window crank that turns and a couple other knobs that turn. And it has a sunroof too! I like to drive my car around on the back patio, though sometimes I get frustrated when it won’t go the direction I would like it to.

Let’s see, what else? A lot of people came to our house one night this week. That was fun. Mommy says it was a “neighborhood potluck” and a lot of our neighbors came. She planned it herself with another neighbor and it was nice to have all those people there talking. It wasn’t all adults. Some girls came too. They were a lot older than me but they liked playing with me. A lot of older girls like to play with me, and I don’t mind. They are fun to play with.

I also like playing with my friend Eleanor. She is older than me too but not by quite so much. We go to her house sometimes to play. She has a baby brother named Lewis. I like to rock Lewis in his rocking seat when he cries. He has eyes and a nose and toes! I don’t have a baby brother or sister.

Mommy and I have to go shopping this morning. We need to get batteries and food for me. We go to a different store than we usually do to find things for me that don’t have wheat in them. We get rice bread so I can eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I like peanut butter and jelly, especially if it is good grape jelly that Mommy made!

I hope you are doing okay. Are the leaves changing colors at your place? They are starting to change colors here. They are very pretty. Mommy planted pansies and they are pretty too. Sometimes I help her water them! Maybe sometime Aunt Lucy can help you write to me again. I would like to know what music you like. I am very interested in music right now. Maybe you could tell me about plants that you like, too.

Love,

Isaac

Dear Great-Grandma,

How are you doing this week? I am doing well. I have been practicing my vocabulary. Just this evening I was showing Mommy and Daddy how many words I know. We were all eating dinner together and I started naming everything I could see. “Door. Pumpkin. Table. Refrigerator. Stove. Light.” Then Mommy and Daddy started asking me the names of some other things and I did pretty well. I got “spoon” and “fork” but not “knife,” and I got the plate and bowl mixed up but I know napkin.

Speakiing of napkins, right now I am putting a napkin on my head and playing peekaboo with Mommy. She thinks it is pretty funny and so do I. Ooh, now she is tickling me! Hold on, I have to try to tickle her back.

Okay, I am done. I want to tell you about my pumpkins! I have two pumpkins. I got the first one when Mommy and I were selling corn a week or two ago. The man who grows the corn also grows pumpkins and eggplants and other stuff, and he gave me a little tiny pumpkin just for me. It is probably a little bigger than your hand. It is a lot bigger than my hand because my hands are small, but it’s just the right size for me. So that is one of my pumpkins, and I really like it. But this past weekend we went to something called a “Relief Sale,” and Daddy bought me a BIG pumpkin there! It is only half as tall as me, but it weighs a lot more than I do. I can’t move it! So now I have a little pumpkin and a big pumpkin, and I like them both a lot. I can say “little pumpkin” and “big pumpkin.” Mommy made up a pumpkin song for me. You can sing it to the tune of “Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” Here’s how it goes:

One little pumpkin sitting on the floor;

Isaac went out to get some more.

He found one and brought it in–

Now little Isaac has two pumpkins!

And then the next verse is about two pumpkins, and then three, and then four, and you can keep counting as long as you like. I ask Mommy to sing it for my by saying, “Pumpkin, floor!”

Another song I like that Mommy sings is “Me Oh My,” and she made that one up too. It is a lullaby, so sometimes when I climb into bed with Lamby I say “Me oh my” and she sings it for me. I think she likes it when I ask for that one because she made it up just for me.

I saw Oma this weekend, too. She came down to visit us and go to the Relief Sale. The Relief Sale is where everybody gets together and thinks of a bunch of ways to give money to people who need it. Mommy made a lot of bread to sell at the sale, and other people gave toys to sell, and quilts, and other pretty things. But the things I liked best were the horses, the tractors, and the bounce house. There were big horses pulling a wagon, and big tractors pulling other wagons. I got to ride on a wagon behind a tractor and Daddy got to drive a tractor. That was fun! But even more fun was the bounce house. It is like a big balloon that you can go inside and bounce in. I was a very good bouncer! Even though I am so young and little, and everybody was older than me, I only fell down a couple times and I got right back up again. I jumped and jumped and didn’t want to get out. Even when Oma showed me the balloon she got for me, I still didn’t want to get out! Daddy had to come in and get me.

Let me see, what else have I been doing lately? I am learning to help Mommy. Lately I have started trying to do whatever she is doing, and while I am doing it I say, “Helping!” I try to be helpful whenever I can, unless I am doing something more important. Like reading, for instance. Oma brought me a new book this weekend that I really like. It is called “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?” I can’t quite say all that but I can say, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, see!” and that means I want Mommy to read me the book again. We have read it many times so far. I don’t know how many. Maybe, one, two, three, four, one, two, three… times. (That is the way I count now, by the way. I count to four and then I start over. One, two, three, four, one, two ducks!)

Well, tonight I am going to a barn party with Mommy and Daddy and some girls and boys from our church. I won’t be able to stay the whole time because it is past my bedtime but I get to come for part of it, which is nice. I don’t know what a barn party is like, though. Have you ever been to a barn party? Anyway, I suppose I should go and get ready for that. I have to put my socks and shoes and coat on. Good night!

Love,

Isaac